Pehr Evind Svinhufvud, (born Dec. 15, 1861, Sääksmäki, Fin.—died Feb. 29, 1944, Luumäki) first chief of state of independent Finland, as prime minister and then as president. He headed the Finnish government during his country’s civil war (1918) and in the early 1930s. He was instrumental in suppressing Finland’s Communist Party and maintaining a rightist regime.

Svinhufvud, detail from an oil painting by Antti Faven, 1923; in the Art Gallery of Ateneum, …

Courtesy of the Office of the Prime Minister, Helsinki

Svinhufvud entered the Finnish Parliament in 1894, while Finland was still part of the Russian Empire. His anti-Russian position earned him exile in Siberia from 1914 to 1917. Having returned at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of March 1917, he became prime minister of Finland, on November 27. He led the victorious “White” government during the Finnish Civil War of 1918 and secured (with German aid) Finland’s independence from Soviet Russia. Being pro-German, he resigned after Germany’s defeat in World War I and entered the conservative National Coalition Party. As prime minister from July 5, 1930, to Feb. 16, 1931, and president from March 2, 1931, to Feb. 28, 1937, he aided the rightist Lapua Movement in the suppression of the Communist Party but resisted efforts to turn Finland into an authoritarian, antidemocratic state.

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